June Magazine: Rabil Q&A Extras

Inside Lacrosse Magazine featured Paul Rabil on the cover of our June issue, with a six-page Q&A covering everything: from his endorsements to training to Major League Lacrosse to the National Lacrosse League and beyond. It's one of the longest Q&As we've ever done, and Paul answered all of our questions.

Here's a few that didn't make the magazine. For more, be sure to stop into your local lacrosse store or buy a copy online.

Is there any advice here you would give to a high school player in regards to training?For a high school kid, the biggest focus for me that I found successful was just on my technique and my fundamentals. There was no other time where I spent so much time on the wall. Because in high school there's just so much room for improvement, and you can just see that improvement so quickly as well. Whereas now you have to really just put your foot to the pedal and really just grind it out, and you want to continually push yourself to just get a half mile per hour better, a half an inch more accurate. At the high school level, there's just so much room for improvement to just focus on the fundamentals, shooting and stick work every single day.

Who were the players you looked up to when you were a kid?Well, I started playing when I was 12 and it was so different than it is now. We only saw the Final Four on TV. It wasn’t until my freshman-sophomore year of high school that I had an assistant coach, Scott Pew, at DeMatha, who was a film studier. He’d get me VHS tapes of college games and I would come knocking on his door and get a new one every week. I don’t know how he got them but he had them. I’d throw them into my VCR and watch them every night until I fell asleep. But guys that were playing when I was in high school at the time, A.J. Haugen and Josh Sims: those were the two I watched all the time. They both were dodging midfielders who could shoot on the run, but their styles were different. A.J. could split and he had that lateral shake. Josh Sims was really like, 'I am faster than you, I am going to plant hard and just go and shoot on the run.' Those are the two guys I looked up to, and Kyle Harrison, Adam Doneger, Jesse Hubbard, Jay Jalbert. They all played within 4-6 years of each other and of me really hitting my form and realizing what I wanted to be. I have tried to become a combination of all of them.

Do you have any good celebrity anecdotes?When I first graduated and played, I'd get a lot of questions on airplanes of 'What's lacrosse?' or 'They have a pro sport?” Or 'I didn't know they had a pro league.' For people who aren't in the lacrosse world, the question is now, 'When's the season? Are you playing now?' Which seems small but it's a huge leap, just overall commonality of just knowing that there is a pro game, and that there are pro lacrosse players, and never do I get questions any more of what else do you do? I used to get that all the time. 'You work?' Yeah I work, I work out every day.' (laughter)

In terms of interaction with other athletes, it's at a point now where I've been fortunate I've been asked to do a lot of these shoots, so I go into do ESPN Sports Science (see below) and Angels pitcher CJ Wilson is finishing up, and he sort of walks in, and you say hello, and he's like, 'Yeah, lacrosse has really grown in California' and stuff like that. Just a really normal, candid conversation. I've never felt like I've been inferior as a professional athlete, and then when I'm done, next comes in Brandon Weeden, because they were doing an NFL Draft feature too. So he comes in, Oklahoma boy, big guy, knows what lacrosse is: 'Oh you're a lacrosse guy, great.' and I'm having a catch with him, A lot of times like that you're just in a situation where people recognize lacrosse as a professional sport and professional athletes.

What's the most best thing you've learned from Bill Belichick?

From the lacrosse aspect, just his passion for the game; you can't even quantify it. He just loves it. And it's always motivating for me when I go and I'm in Boston for a clinic in the offseason, and he gives me a shout and sees if I want to come and watch practice that evening. So I show up kind of late to the practice, he has me on the field kind of watching, just like spontaneously afterwards wants to see if we have a catch on the field, and lets go grab a bite at dinner, and we talk, and it's all about lacrosse and afterwards he's like,'Man, thanks so much for taking me out. It's just so awesome. I love it.' He's like, 'I only do this like five times a year, it's great.' He texted me after we won the MLL championship. He was following the live feed because he couldn't watch the whole thing on TV. That kind of attention that he has to the game is gratifying and motivating.

You've made comments about your distaste for the current “Lax Bro” culture, but at the same time you are a young, fashionable lacrosse player with long hair. How do you distinguish that?
(laughter) Yeah its unbelievable, I get Twitter comments every day @PaulRabil, #LaxBro — but look, I don't think it's a bad thing. There's going to be different styles, and lacrosse, from a lifestyle component, is an outlet for a lot of youth, and also collegiate and pro players. It's a really fashionable sport, but also something you can express yourself through doing. And the lax bro culture is what it is. When I was younger I used to always doodle a lacrosse player with a helmet on and some hair in the back, long before it was called flow. I've been dubbed with a lot of flow, but in terms of my style, I don't wear SpongeBob shorts, or shorts with Snickers patterns on them, but if kids want to wear it, and kids are dedicated to the training aspect and actually improving their game, that's great. And if kids are going to wear it and just twirl the stick around and not advance themselves, I'm fine with that too. Because from the business side of it, it's all contributing to the growth and popularity of the game. But again it's just a certain way kids express themselves.
The times that I speak out against it, the very few times, is like when someone asks me if I'm a lax bro. No I don't consider myself a lax bro. I consider myself a lacrosse athlete.

You signed last year with Warrior, but did you ever think to make your own brand?I was approached by some investors to do that. I just think that with my position, I am student of the game and of business, and a student of sports and business. Even if I built a good company and sold it off and made some money, at the bottom of my heart I felt that it would not have been as positive for the industry as continuing to grow what we currently have versus going rogue. While financially that could have been beneficial, it's just separate from what has already gotten us where we are. The opportunity to build a brand within one of the best if not the best in the industry outweighed it for me — having experts who have been in the industry forever versus having to start on my own. I am very fortunate to be with Warrior.

Should the NCAA install a shot clock?I think it is critical that the NCAA makes a change, as soon as possible. The game is getting more and more coverage and now it is beginning to plateau at that coverage. It will plateau at that coverage in the next 2-3 years if it doesn’t get another boost. The pace of the game is going to help that.

Talk about the Paul Rabil Foundation.
With this rush over the past couple of years that I've had in the game, and been fortunate enough to have a fan base that's so supportive, and media outlets that are so supportive as well, I've been given an opportunity to really give back in a much more effective and personal way than I had in the past, where my parents and my family and I were always giving back to the church and different charities. Something that I wanted to do with my family was start a foundation that benefited children with learning differences, specifically dyslexia, something that's been a part of my family and friends. My sister went through the Lab School in Washington D.C. I always watched her play different sports growing up there. She went on to go to FIT in New York, and she's had a great career.

And for me, I wanted to really give back to other children with dyslexia, and the first opportunity that came to mind was to start a lacrosse program there, and when I met with their heads of school they were just ecstatic. So Warrior helped me out, and we outfitted full men's and women's varsity teams there, and then the more you talk, and the more you kind of get involved with this type of thing, the more you begin to brainstorm other ways to help. And from that, for whatever reason, I don't know why, when I was younger I used to always remember my parents, at a certain time I think when my sister was going to middle school, we lived in Montgomery County, so outside of D.C., you could never get funding for the Lab School. They went to every possible extreme to try to search for sponsorship, and I just remember there being very few. So we said we'll start a lacrosse program and we'll also start a fund.

It was just sort of like for something you think, Ok I can just spend a little bit of time each week on this, and the type of reception you get is just unbelievably gratifying. So we wanted to do initially one full scholarship, but we talked about the problem of a family becoming dependent on that, and doing multiple scholarships — so we decided to raise as much money as we can to give micro-grant scholarships, something to benefit the family as much as we can, but something they're not dependent on, so we started the foundation's first Gala this past December. And it was just another great sign and show of support from the lacrosse community, which is another thing that was just so special about it.

We're continually doing that. We're getting approached, and building out a staff now with the foundation. We were just given our [501]c(3) status by the IRS, and I just found out two days ago that Red Bull, the New York Red Bulls, are offering a portion of every ticket sale on their May 23 game to benefit my foundation, so stuff like that is just awesome. Our growth is continual, and we're looking to see what types of new ground we can build.